(I mean, after the unfortunate “taunting” incident?)
You know, the post where his mom (our very own, much loved Kcruella) and I went up for his Army graduation at Fort Benning? (wait…there’s the taunting again…)
Well, I think the Army agrees with him splendidly, don’t you? He has a comPLETEly adorable wife (and baby girl due this winter), who has been a consumate, good humored trooper, God bless her. They’ve just gotten back from living in Korea for a year (she joined him on her own) and were stationed in Colorado.

He leaves for a year in Afghanistan Sunday morning.

I know your mother’s already threatened you as far as “volunteering” goes (The specter of waking up in a hospital in Germany with Kcruella and aunts en masse circling the sickbed should be deterrent enough. I can get there Space “A”, with a Dunkin Donuts box.), so ’nuff said.

Don’t worry about a single thing here ~ that girl of yours is dynamite. (And like the New Jersey crew would ever let a thing go awry?) Take care of yourself and your guys. We’re so damn proud of you, don’t you know.

The revisions in gross domestic product, or GDP, now show zero growth in 2008. That compares with a 0.4 percent gain previously estimated.The economy also grew less in 2007 (1.9 percent) than earlier thought (2.1 percent).

WASHINGTON — The U.S. economic recovery will remain slow deep into next year, held back by shoppers reluctant to spend and employers hesitant to hire, according to an Associated Press survey of leading economists.

The latest quarterly AP Economy Survey shows economists have turned gloomier in the past three months. They foresee weaker growth and higher unemployment than they did before.

…The unemployment rate will be no lower at the end of the year than it is now — 9.5 percent.

A majority think it will be 2015 or later before the rate falls to a historically normal 5 percent.

(Right here) But.
What really got me? This second-to-last line from Jules about at the end (emphasis mine).

…But enough with the class warfare, now that he’s been forced to pay up like a commoner. Prime election time is coming up, and it will be interesting to see which local candidates, congressional or gubernatorial, are ready to embrace Old Owed-Or-Not, and which will treat him like some kind of biblical ocean-going pariah. Could get awkward next month.The Obamas are vacationing on Martha’s Vineyard. Don’t bring the boat over, John!

The SOB can’t stay off the telly and he SURE as HELL can’t stay home either, can he?

The package arrived at Cindy Lohman’s home in Great Mills, Maryland, just two weeks after she learned that her son, Ryan, a 24-year-old Army sergeant, had been killed by a bomb in Afghanistan. It was a thick, 9-inch-by- 12-inch envelope from Prudential Financial Inc., which handles life insurance for the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Inside was a letter from Prudential about Ryan’s $400,000 policy. And there was something else, which looked like a checkbook. The letter told Lohman that the full amount of her payout would be placed in a convenient interest-bearing account, allowing her time to decide how to use the benefit.

…As time went on, she says, she tried to use one of the “checks” to buy a bed, and the salesman rejected it. That happened again this year, she says, when she went to a Target store to purchase a camera on Armed Forces Day, May 15.

…Lohman, a public health nurse who helps special-needs children, says she had always believed that her son’s life insurance funds were in a bank insured by the FDIC.

That money — like $28 billion in 1 million death-benefit accounts managed by insurers — wasn’t actually sitting in a bank.

NOT a penny of it is FDIC ensured. One of the “handbooks” omits that information entirely, not that a grieving family would notice the omission.

Read the WHOLE thing.

SHARE the WHOLE thing. How many of us have active duty kids, know someone who does, or, like our own Skyler, are active duty themselves?

Under a little-noticed provision of the recently passed financial-reform legislation, the Securities and Exchange Commission no longer has to comply with virtually all requests for information releases from the public, including those filed under the Freedom of Information Act.

And (from a review I’ve found), of course, the book opens “with an interesting chapter on his [ths: Dr. Hansen’s] participation in four meetings of Vice President Dick Cheney’s cabinet-level Climate Task Force in 2001. It seems that the Bush Administration was prepared to let Dr. Hansen’s views on climate change influence policy. However, Dr. Richard Lindzen, whom Hansen describes as “the dean of of global warming contrarians”, was also present at the meetings. Dr.Lindzen was able to confuse the task force members enough so that they never took Dr. Hansen’s views seriously.”

Get. Outta. Muthalovin’ DODGE?!?!?!??!?! NOT Bush again?

DAMN those constantly confusable, confused Bushians!

(You just never know where the little devils’ll pop up in the blame game next, do you? Great googleymoogly, I wish I’d trademarked the bastard ~ for every Bush whine, a dime! In just the past 20 months of incompetent bitching, major dad and I could have accrued enough petulant lucre to purchase a seagoing conveyance to make Lurch’s tax scofflaw look positively scowish!) (No offense intended, TahRAYza. Talking boats here.)
Anyways.

BUY. THIS. BOOK.Or we all dieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee…….aaaaaaaaaaaaiiiiiieeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

BOSTON (FOX 25 / MyFoxBoston.com) – Sen. John Kerry has told the Massachusetts Department of Revenue he will pay all the taxes due on his new $7 million yacht despite basing the vessel in tax-free Rhode Island .

In a statement Tuesday to The Associated Press, the Democrat said, “The payment is being made promptly.”

He was Swift Yachted!

In his statement, Kerry says, “Whether owed or not, we intend to pay the equivalent taxes as if the boat’s home-port were currently in Massachusetts.”

Oh, the hurtfulness. Boston Herald piles on, with New England boat builders wondering why, in times of hardship, Sen. Thurston Howell … I mean John Kerry, D-Mass., had to outsource his luxury, going halfway around the world to buy the $7 million luxury yacht he was berthing across state lines in tax-free Rhode Island

A few weeks ago my Bride and Daughter were out of town for the week and once again left me cruelly to my own devices. Every year when they do this I end up wandering around food stores like the 13th Tribe looking for the gluttonous promised land. I was trying to think of something else to use the baby portabellas I had in, as ‘shrooms are generally verboten when the Beloved Ladies are around. Since it was early July and only around 95 in both temperature and humidity I figured what better Summer dish than a nice hearty lamb and potato and mushroom skillet?

As I am a big tent kind of guy I picked up some of those funky fingerling rainbow coalition ‘taters

and sliced them as thin as I dare attempt after a drink or two

well, first actually that empty glass needed to be taken care of

I do apologize for this shoddy caipirinha technique; please be assured that I would never use the lime press for guests but by gum it sure does speed things up when I am thirsty. Claude, of course, purist that he is, found my corner-cutting to be beneath contempt

Anyhow, refreshed and refilled I carefully made ever thicker slices of these pretty little things called spuds

until I had about a pound or so done

Now I threw half a stick of butter into the pan and let it meltify

over medium-high heat and dumped in the spuds with a little salt and pepper as I reckoned they’d take a while to cook

Now it was time to turn my attention to the lamb, which suddenly made a certain someone forget his earlier (wholly justified) disdain for me

after tithing him his portion of the ground lamb in it went to a different pan

to be browned and drained of all that lanolin slickness. This gave me a moment to slice up about a pound of the baby ‘bellas and mince up a little onion and toss them in with the spuds

along with some rosemary and a little bit of thyme. After five minutes or so in went five cloves of garlic

and a couple of minutes after that the by now browned and drained lamb made its glorious entrance

I then added about a half inch of beef stock

loosely covered it and let it simmer for, oh, twenty minutes or so while I attended to some pressing business

that I could no longer safely ignore.

At the end of the twenty or so minutes things smelled quite delish and it had reduced somewhat to the point where it was rather good